Carlos paused and listened. From where he was standing in the head-boning room, the place where cattle heads were stripped of their cheeks and tongues, the sound of Kim’s rock came through as merely a muffled thump. Yet as an experienced burglar, he knew he could not ignore any unexpected noises; invariably they spelled trouble.
Carlos closed the top of the combo bin then turned out the light. He slipped out of the bloody white coat and pulled off the gauntlet-length, yellow rubber gloves he was wearing. He stowed these items under a sink. Picking up his knife, he moved silently but swiftly from the boning room out into the kill floor. There he doused the light as well. Once again he stopped to listen. He would have retreated up the cattle chute except he wasn’t quite finished.
Kim had climbed through the window headfirst. He did his best to avoid the shards of broken glass on the floor but wasn’t entirely successful. As he got to his feet he had to brush a few small slivers gingerly from his palms. With that accomplished, he scanned the room. He saw a blinking red light on a motion detector high in one corner but ignored it.
The abandoned cell phone, the upended chairs, as well as a broken panel of glass in the door to the front hall immediately convinced Kim that he was standing in the room where Marsha had been when she called him. He also noticed the open door at the rear of the room and guessed after being surprised she’d fled in that direction.
Dashing to this second door, Kim looked down the length of a deserted back hallway. He paused to listen. There wasn’t a sound, a fact which only fanned his ever building anxiety.
Kim started down the corridor, rapidly opening each door he came to. He glanced into storerooms, cleaning closets, a locker room, and several restrooms. At the far end of the hall, he came to a lunchroom. He paused at the threshold. What caught his attention was the trail of overturned chairs leading to a rear door. Kim followed the trail out the rear door and up a half flight of steps. He yanked open the fire door and stepped through.
Kim again paused. He didn’t know what to do. He found himself in a room filled with a labyrinth of machinery and raised metal platforms that cast grotesque shadows.
Kim noticed a cloyingly fetid smell that was vaguely familiar. His mind struggled to make the association. Within seconds he had the answer. The odor reminded him of observing an autopsy as a second-year medical student. He shuddered against the mostly suppressed, unpleasant memory.
“Marsha!” Kim yelled in desperation. “Marsha!”
There was no response. The only thing Kim could hear were the numerous echoes of his own frantic voice.
To Kim’s immediate right was a fire station with an extinguisher, a long, heavy-duty flashlight, and a cabinet with glass-paneled doors that revealed a canvas fire hose and long-handled firefighter’s axe. Kim snatched the flashlight from its bracket and turned it on. Its concentrated beam illuminated narrow conic sections of the room and cast even more grotesque shapes onto the walls.
Kim set out into the alien world, shining the light in fast-moving arcs. He proceeded in a clockwise direction, skirting past the machinery to explore more thoroughly.
After a few minutes, he paused and again yelled out Marsha’s name. Besides his echoes, all he could hear was the sound of dripping water.
Ahead the flashlight beam swept across a grate. Kim moved it back. Over the center of the grate was a dark smear. Advancing to the grate, he bent down, and shined the light directly on the smear. Hesitantly he reached out with his index finger and touched it. A chill went down his spine. It was blood!
Carlos had pressed himself against the wall of the head-boning room, at the very lip of the doorless opening to the kill-room floor. He’d been retreating from Kim’s relentless advance. Carlos had first seen Kim as he’d come down the back hallway clearly on a searching mission.
Carlos had no idea who this stranger was and had first hoped the man would content himself with wandering around the office area of the plant. But once Kim had come into the kill floor and had yelled out Marsha’s name, Carlos knew he’d have to kill him.